In client/server computer systems, in order to provide increased server system bandwidth, a number of instances of a server application program may be provided. All instances of the server application program share the same IP address and are arranged to accept communications on the same network port. A network port is an identification number used to pair incoming network data traffic to a given process or application running on the receiving computer. In other words, several instances of the server application program are active and waiting upon the IP address and port used by a given client application program. When a client application program connects to the IP address and port, one of the server instances is selected to establish a connection with the client application program.
During the subsequent interaction between the client application program and the selected instance of the server application program, data or other objects are likely to be created within the persistent storage for a selected instance of the server application program. Further steps in the processing may be dependent on such data or objects. Therefore, in order to preserve such objects, the connection between the client application program and the selected instance of the server application program must be maintained.
One problem is that if the connection is removed or lost, the client application program will be unable to reconnect to the same instance of the server application program and elements of the created data or objects may be lost. Furthermore, maintaining the connection requires significant network and server computer resources.